Schools

Petterson returning to Weldon Valley

Retired official will be acting superintendent as of March 19

Bob Petterson, who retired as Weldon Valley superintendent in 2013, will return March 19 as acting superintendent. (Fort Morgan Times file photo)

The Weldon Valley School Board has figured out who will lead Weldon Valley School District in coming weeks or months: Bob Petterson.

This should be a fairly familiar job for Petterson, who retired as Weldon Valley School District superintendent in summer 2013.

On Monday night, the board approved appointing him to be the school district's acting superintendent starting March 19.

Earlier in the meeting, the board held an executive session to get legal advice on several different things, including unspecified "confidential matters" and the "proper investigatory procedures" that should be used in investigating the complaints parents made about school district administration, which included both on-leave Superintendent Doug Pfau and Principal/Athletic Director Jeff Sparrow.

The school district's attorney, Ed Zorn, was not there Monday night. But Ray Laws, an associate of Zorn's, filled in and met with the board in that executive session, which lasted about an hour and 20 minutes.

Also attending about the first half of that executive session was Petterson, who likely was negotiating terms with the board for coming back to work as acting superintendent.

After the executive session, the board did not publicly mention or discuss the proposed investigation.

But among the complaints likely to be investigated were that the administrators had both allowed a culture of bullying and retribution to grow at Weldon Valley and participated in that culture. They also had expressed concerns at the Feb. 20 meeting about the safety and well-being of the students as a result.

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The crowd was also there that night in support of Jerry Spooner, the longtime Weldon Valley varsity volleyball coach, who saw his coaching contract come to an abrupt end Jan. 16 when the school board voted to open the positions to applications. Spooner on Feb. 20 publicly accused Pfau of illegally altering his coaching contract so as to allow the board to take that action. Spooner provided to the Fort Morgan Times copies of both the contract he signed and the version of it that he received from the school district that has an extra clause in it. That also could be part of the investigation.

Spooner, who re-applied for the coaching job, said he interviewed Monday morning with a panel from the school. But he also said that in 23 years of coaching volleyball at Weldon Valley, he had never had to do annual interviews before for position.

After the board heard the complaints Feb. 20 from around a dozen people, including Spooner, among a crowd of 50-plus, Pfau was put on paid administrative leave pending the results of an investigation and Sparrow was put on probation through the end of the school year. That same night, action was tabled on renewing Sparrow's contract, which otherwise runs out in April.

About half a dozen of those people who attended the Feb. 20 meeting, including some who spoke that night, have continued to come to the special meetings the board has held in recent weeks, including the one Monday night.

They stood or sat in the school lobby throughout the board's executive session, expecting some sort of action to be taken yet that night on hiring an investigator to look into their complaints or at least hearing something from the board about the investigation.

That did not happen, with the rest of the open meeting following the executive session seeing the board only voting on appointing Petterson as acting superintendent. That only took a couple minutes, after which School Board President Zoey Loomis adjourned the meeting. There was no further discussion of the proposed investigation, hiring an investigator or what will or could happen with Pfau or Sparrow.

Several members of the audience were audibly upset when the board did not take any action on hiring an investigator. More than one person expressed frustration with this loudly enough to be overheard, saying that the board was putting off hiring someone too long and questioning whether a fair investigation would still be possible at that point.

The next regular Weldon Valley School Board meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 20, at the school. Loomis told the Times that there were no plans for any other special meetings to be held before that regular meeting.

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